When Chris Hardwick, 45, isn’t fulfilling his duties as CEO of multiplatform media giant Nerdist Industries, the Louisville, Kentucky, standup comic is in front of the camera, hosting not one, but three very different shows: NBC’s game show The Wall, AMC’s Talking Dead (the after-show for zombie fave The Walking Dead) and Comedy Central’s @midnight with Chris Hardwick.

How do you decide which part of your personality you’re going to use for each show?

They’re all me, but every show is a relationship. You have a relationship to the show, the show has a relationship to the audience. All the relationships are unique. Your energy is probably slightly different with one friend than it is with another friend, so it’s like that.

Do you feel like a therapist on Talking Dead? You get people through the hard stuff that happens on The Walking Dead.

I think it’s a cross between therapist and customer service rep. Because I’m the public voice of the show, whatever people’s feelings are, they’ll direct them at me. If they’re happy, they’ll let me know and if they’re upset, they’ll let me know even though they know that I don’t control any of that. It’s like I’m the person that they can get a hold of. I have such a direct link to the audience and the show is so much about helping the community process whatever happened on [The Walking Dead].

For @midnight, where celebrities compete, you really need to know pop culture. ls that something you’ve always been interested in?

My family moved a lot when I was a kid. I didn’t really socialize well with other kids and I watched all the American pop culture stuff in the ’80s. There was a standup comedy boom, which largely drove my desire to want to do standup, which actually started in the ‘70s with Steve Martin records.

How do you find the time now to stay up on pop culture with everything you do?

I don’t get to consume as much as I would prefer to. I’m behind on shows that I want to watch and I’m behind on games that I want to play. That’s a luxury problem of being busy with work. Now I have a wife [Lydia Hearst], so maybe it’s not the coolest thing to come home and just go, “Hey,” and then plop in front of the XBox. But I did get her addicted to the 3DS. That was my Christmas present to her last year, and she took to it. It’s great because now we play stuff together.

From a hosting perspective, Talking Dead and @midnight are both very intimate with smallish audiences. The Wall is a giant set and big money. Is that something you always wanted to do?

When I was a kid, I watched a lot of game shows. And all those shows were big and flashy so I always wanted to do a big, flashy game show. The thing about The Wall is it’s not intimate from the size of the set, but if you really watch the show, there’s a very intimate relationship between me and the person who’s standing on stage.

Did you have to audition for The Wall?

I’d known the folks at NBC for a while, Paul Telegdy [President, Alternative & Reality Group: NBC Entertainment, Universal Television Alternative Studio], and we’ve always had conversations about working together if the right thing came along. He came to me and said, “I’ve got this really fun game show and LeBron James is one of the executive producers. Just do a run through and see if you like it.” Within five minutes, I was completely hooked. I was screaming at the wall. This was just in a conference room where they did a digital version. I got super sucked into it.

Are you still interested in pursuing acting?

I like hosting and I like stand up because I like being me. I feel like I have a lot more freedom that way. I don’t like being trapped in someone else’s thing. Hosting just feels very, very comfortable for me. I have a ridiculous amount of experience doing it, and I feel I’m a better host than I am an actor.

What is success to you?

Luckily, I’m in this really great place right now where I don’t have to do anything I don’t want to do. I think that’s about as much success as you can ever ask for-not having to do anything you don’t want to do to survive.